Mike from Irish duo New Portals shares how a unique incident helped him and his partner Ruth to see a new dimension.

This week, Mike from Irish duo New Portals shares how a unique incident helped him and partner Ruth to see a new dimension in music. Scroll down for their story.

Ruth and I accepted a song-writing job offered by a Belfast-based theater production company. We decided to compose on the move whilst we traveled through Thailand and Malaysia. Feeling disillusioned with our experience of living a creative life without ever gaining significant recognition, we had briefly considered taking six weeks off from our daily writing ritual to simply soak up the experiences that south-east Asia had to offer.

In the end, we brought our ukulele strapped to a backpack to help us along as we recorded our ideas on an iPhone and shared them with a director back home via email. We wrote on the balcony of our beach bungalow in Koh Tao as the monsoons swept by and as the sun set off Turtle Island. We crafted our lyrics in cockroach-infested motels in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, as we sweated and re-adjusted our tiny bedroom fan.

We were writing to a brief and working to a deadline, but we were certain that our songs should and could be more than just stopgaps between scenes on stage. It was children’s interactive theater and the songs were to be simple and memorable with sound scapes to fit an adventure involving a crew of space adventurers.

We used the term ‘alien’ as a double entendre; whilst we described the onstage exploits of aliens from various planets (and Pluto) within our solar system, we interwove themes of togetherness, acceptance and friendship. We felt these were good messages to be teaching children, even if this message was not as conspicuous as the striped, furry arms of our Martian character or the flashing teeth of our Plutonians.

The show toured and received great reviews from children, parents, and teachers who watched and participated in the immersive experience.

After a few months had passed, we received a message from the uncle of a six-year-old boy named Eoin who had passed away the week before. Eoin had been living with severe cerebral palsy. Having seen the theater show a few weeks previously, he had since become very unwell. We learned from his uncle that our music had been played to him continually over his last few days of life. At his funeral, Eoin's favorite song was played; one of the songs that we had written.

We both cried as soon as we read the message. We felt obligated to share it with the actors and the director of the show. Each time we reread the message we would shed more tears. Each time I came back to it I felt compelled by two instincts; empathy for Eoin's family, but also a deep gratitude that a song we had written had achieved such a high level of success. Our success was that our song was able to engage, entertain, and comfort a young boy having to come to terms with the end of his short life.

In the months that went by after receiving this news we reflected on how songs can be more than just chords, melodies and lyrics. Songs can become portals to another world, another place, where our physical, and even our mental anguish, can be faded out, helping us engage with something larger than ourselves.

We doubted that diverging from our music industry goals could ever pay-off - we were wrong. This idea of songs being portals to another better place is one that we have carried forward into our new project, which we have named “New Portals".

IASCA is the Irish Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. Based in Ireland, their members are the Irish music writers of all genres - artists, songwriters, composers and lyricists. Their goal is to represent their members, support them, protect their interests and create an environment where new talent can thrive.PLAY IRISH is an IASCA initiative to promote Irish music both at home and overseas. This playlist is brought to you by the IASCA, visit their website here: www.iasca.ie.